Presence (II)

As I sit
And look,
The world is moving around me.

A glassy sky
Slides easily across mountains,
Stirring the light, and
I am inundated
By the eddies and currents
Of fluid firmament
On its way to everywhere.

Grass ripples
And sways in an elegant dance
For miles,
Reveling in the glory of living.

The world moves and lives
And saturates me with
Serenity.

Presence (I)

Soft earth my cushion,
Sitting against a firm tree.
Grasses dance in the field.

Breeze runs fingers through my hair,
Lazily toys with the mill nearby.
The sun wraps me in warmth.

Luminous clouds migrate,
Shadowing acres as they pass.
Mountains can't fence them in.

Presence fills all 'round,
Stirs my core to pure joy.
Stones needn't speak.

To Stray

Shoes hit pavement echoes round
Lone pilgrim wandering through
Streets pressing with silent empty

Birdsong through cotton mist
Siren's song in dimming light
Draws beckons urges lures

Compulsive overcomes qualms if barely
Pressing into unknown realm
Guided only by gleaming note

Futher stranger further into
Tangles branches moss webs hanging
Obscuring thread which leads somewhere

Nowhere here nothing hear
Sound gone rushing noise
Twisting sliding falling grasping

Blue bath of light now
Circle of earth walls surround
Stillness calm and serene yet
Wrong and needles to heart and mind
Alluring yet not without feeling
Caught or already soon fettered

Thoughts Upon Observing An Impenetrable Forest

The human race is like running water: it always flows into the paths of least resistance. After a while, these paths become ruts that offer even less resistance. These ruts join other ruts in their common flows of time until the movement of the race is like a complex network of rivers, branching here and joining there, ever flowing where everyone else flows, where it is easiest.
There are places, however, that the ruts never penetrate - areas of hard, rocky soil that none dare venture into. Through time, these places become islands, not worn smooth and slick by the rushing of humanity, but coarse and full of texture. The human race simply ignores these islands. They are by no means easy places to travel - completely inhospitable to the liquid flow, and so they go on forever: untouched, pristine, entirely unknown to the human race.
Every so often, however, there comes along a one who decides to venture in, and what that one finds there can never be understood by the rest.

Dreaming

Shock of realization,
All things solid now undone,
Oh, nowhere to run!

Watcher

It is in ev'ning, clear and red,
That most go finally to bed.
But one there is, unseen though near,
Who lifts his head and turns his ear
For sight of wolf in shadowed glen,
Or sound of bat in cavern dim;
For he it is who guards the bed
Of sleeping peasants in their dread.

Haiku 2

Hopping on pavement,
Flash of crimson brilliant;
Stops and stares at me.

After The Fact

Was I sleeping, earlier?
The day seems somehow diff'rent
Than how it was before.

I feel back to normalcy,
At least normal in the sense
Of what I was before.

      But normal?
      What is normal?

I will never be the same -
I think as I look backwards
To how I was before.

What is to become of me?
Brand new person, now set free?
What was I, then, before?

      A dead man?
      No.  A deaf man?

The ground was up above me,
The clouds around me swirling.
"This was my home, before".

Comfort was where I called home.
Comfort is gone, but at least
Someone has gone before.